Tesco is getting ready to welcome customers to the opening of a new Express store in Beckenham next week.

The Chinese Garage store on Wickham Road store will open its doors on 1 February and in addition to providing 19 new jobs, it brings with it food bank donations and Tesco’s Bags of Help funding opportunities for local good causes. 

Tofiqul Islam, the store’s manager, said that supporting the community’s residents will be hugely important to store staff in the coming years. 

He added: “We’re extremely excited to be opening our Chinese Garage Tesco Express store and helping to serve the community during these challenging times.  

“We are investing in the community by employing and training local people, and it’ll be a pleasure to see them develop and improve. 

“Our colleagues come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with many finding stable positions hard to find or have sought career changes because of the pandemic. We are excited to welcome so much new talent and experience into our Tesco Team. 

“We will of course also promote Tesco’s Bags of Help scheme, with the aim of donating thousands of pounds for local good causes that can help the community to flourish.” 

Local groups are invited to apply for community funding through Bags of Help, Tesco’s blue token voting scheme which sees three local projects voted on by customers in store every three months, with first place awarded £2,000, second place £1,000 and third place £500. To date Bags of Help has provided £6.1million to 2,622 projects across London since 2016, with over £45,000 provided directly to groups in Beckenham including Rangefield Primary School who received £1,000 in 2019 to paint running tracks in the playground to encourage the children to have a healthy lifestyle. 

Although voting is currently not taking place due to the pandemic, organisations can still apply for grants: www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp.  

With England currently under lockdown restrictions during the pandemic, Tofiqul stressed that safety at the store will be of the highest importance. 

Tofiqul said: “The safety of our customers and colleagues is our number one priority and we have been working hard to introduce the social distancing measures designed to keep everyone safe. 

“We are doing this while still offering the community our best service and broad range of products such as fresh food and food to go – and we look forward to welcoming our first customers.” 

One of the other Tesco initiatives that will benefit the Beckenham community is the Community Food Connection Scheme, which is dedicated to ensuring that the most vulnerable within our communities are supplied with essentials even if they cannot leave home. Since its launch in 2015, the Tesco Community Food Connection Scheme has donated nearly 126,000 meals to local charities in Beckenham.   

The Community Food Connection scheme is run in partnership with food redistribution charity FareShare. Each month more than a million meals of food are donated across the country.  

To find out about the scheme, please visit: https://www.tescoplc.com/sustainability/product/food-waste/supporting-customers-communities/community-food-connection/